After a successful stint at PayPal, Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn in 2002. He did it from his living room.

Now LinkedIn is the largest social networking site for business. And yes, the company has filed to go public. The lead managers on the deal include Morgan Stanley (MS), Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM).

As equity markets return and investors warm up to the risk trade, it looks like IPOs are poised for a strong 2011, especially in the tech sector. For example, according to a New York Times report, it looks like Groupon is in the process of talking to various Wall Street bankers to prep for a public offering.

Founded just a couple years ago, the company has grown like a weed. The website provides daily deals, which are at steep discounts. But Groupon actually gets half of the cut. Yes, it's a lucrative business as revenues reached $1 billion last year. Already Groupon is in 35 countries.

Google (GOOG) has been all over the news recently -- if it was the small acquisitions or the proposed net neutrality deal with Verizon (VZ). But perhaps more seriously are the different articles in the media about how the Web is changing and how that's going to affect the search engine giant.

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet is the provocative title of a Wired article published Tuesday. Chris Anderson explains how we changed our habits from using the "wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display." Most importantly, he adds, "it's a world Google can't crawl."

While living in a big city has many advantages, there is actually the problem of having too much to do. The irony is that we often wind up going to the same places.

Well, the folks at Groupon have a solution. They've built a site that posts a cool deal every day (say a spa treatment or gondola cruise). To this end, the site focuses on top-quality offerings without the typical "gotchas."